Incident At Elder Creek Read online

  Tucker’s smile changed to a grimace.

  “By the way,” Leah continued, “I did some snooping around the internet. Apparently, Notch is big in some strange fringe circles. He bills himself as Professor Notch, but I found nothing on any actual degrees he may have earned from a reputable university. His biography is very vague about his education, too.

  “He dabbles in a lot of different areas. He’s given workshops and spoken at conferences—mostly, of the New Age variety. His theories have gotten stranger and stranger over the years. He gained popularity on the circuit about ten years ago, but lately, he’s not been so much of a star.”

  “So what types of things is he into?” Tucker asked.

  “At first there were workshops on the use of hypnotism. Pretty common stuff. Hypnotism to get positive results in life’s little problems like smoking cessation, weight loss, insomnia, all kinds of problems like that. Later on, the information says he gives talks on numerology, reincarnation, psychic ability. The most recent information I found said he held private gatherings in small groups consisting of sessions in iridology and psytrance, nystagmus—”

  Tucker held up her hands. “Whoa! You lost me on those last ones. What the heck are iridology and psy-whatever—and that last one?”

  As Tucker waited for Leah to respond, she felt a tickle in places she didn’t want to think about.

  “I needed to look them up, myself. Weird stuff. Maybe even bordering on the occult. Iridology’s been around for a long time, but it’s certainly not popular anymore. It’s the study of people’s eyes, the irises more specifically, to diagnose ailments. It’s basically been debunked as not founded in science. But he took a different tack with it, claiming he could predict what people should be doing with their lives and their livelihoods by looking at their eyes.”

  Tucker raised an eyebrow.

  Leah continued, “Yes, I know, strange stuff.”

  “Who would believe in such a thing?” Tucker asked.

  “I have no idea, but apparently people are paying him to attend his sessions.”

  “And this psy-whatever. What is it?”

  “Psytrance. It’s using music to put people into a religious-type trance. The music oscillates at certain frequencies, causing people to go into a dazed state.”

  “Like Sufism? The guys who twirl?”

  “Dervishes,” Leah said. “I didn’t find anything to associate the two, I’m not sure Sufism wants to be associated with Psytrance. Besides, the Sufi religion is thousands of years old. Psytrance is much newer.”

  “New Age?”

  “Yes, like New Age, but believe me, even most New Agers don’t want to be involved with it. It’s considered a little too fringe-y. Then there’s the whole nystagmus thing.”

  “Oh, do tell. I can’t wait to hear this one.” Tucker’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Nystagmus is actually a medical issue, where people have involuntary rapid eye movement from side to side. But, like psytrance, some people swear it will send you to nirvana if you do it right—and no music is required.” Leah smiled at her own joke. “But it’s clear Notch was well on his way into the land of weirdness with all this, and some people were actually packing their bags to make the journey with him. Apparently, Amy Hammersmith, the missing girl, joined them. She appeared to be gaga over the guy. It’s why she spent so much time in Portero.”

  “Sitting at the feet of the guru?” Tucker asked.

  “Evidently.”

  Tucker absorbed the information.

  “Do you think she disappeared off to some cabin in the woods staring at her irises in a mirror and practicing her psycho-whatever? Maybe nothing’s happened to her at all and she’s somewhere without a television and doesn’t even know there’s this big to-do over her being gone.”

  Leah sat quietly, staring down at her hands.

  “Leah?”

  She didn’t look up.

  “What’s wrong, Leah?”

  She looked up. Tucker recognized sadness in her eyes. “They found her car this morning. Someone set it on fire on some abandoned property several miles north of Pine Grove. Her purse and phone were in the car.”

  “Did they find her in the car?” Tucker asked.

  “No. The police say they didn’t find any trace of her, but the whole ‘to-do,’ as you call it, has started up all over again. Portero is in turmoil. The New Age community is up in arms, too. They interviewed a couple of their people on the news this morning. They are denouncing Notch and his beliefs and practices. None of them want to be associated with him. He’s becoming an outcast.”

  “Sounds like he already achieved pariah status, but if they’re decrying him on TV, they’re probably making it official. I guess a place like Portero, which tends to attract people and businesses from the New Age movement, can also attract weirdos. So, is Notch a suspect again?”

  “The police aren’t saying. Apparently, they’ve tightened up on information. They’ve circled the wagons, so to speak. You know something’s up when the police spokesperson answers every reporter’s question with the same procedural citation over and over about not wanting to compromise the investigation by commenting on whatever a particular reporter asked. Before I left for the meeting tonight, all the TV interviews were like that.”

  Tucker and Leah drank the rest of their beers in silence. The information Leah gave Tucker about Notch’s practices proved interesting and supported the theory that Notch was a strange goose. Most likely he wasn’t to be trusted, but what his connection with Dunbar was and why she encountered him back in 1873 still qualified as a mystery to her. Something about all this should make sense to her, but it remained out of her grasp, just out of reach. If she grabbed for it, it would disappear—but what was it?

  Forget.

  Frustration boiled up inside of Tucker’s chest. Right now, that word, more than anything, was driving her nuts.

  Forget.

  She couldn’t take it anymore.

  Forget.

  She felt as if fire ants were running all over her body, compelling her to get up and run.

  Tucker jumped up and shifted from one foot to another. “Are you okay with getting home on your own? I need to get out of here.”

  Leah gave her a curious look. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  Before the words were out of Leah’s mouth, Tucker darted out The Charlie’s front door. The look of concern on Leah’s face brought Jackie over to the table in a rush.

  JACKIE LOOKED TOWARD the door and said, “Is something wrong with Tucker?”

  “I’m not sure,” Leah replied. “We were talking about Notch and some information I found on him on the internet. He’s an extremely strange bird, by the way. Then I told her about the latest report on the missing girl—how they found her abandoned car burned. Did you hear about it?”

  Jackie said, “Someone at the meeting told me.”

  “She got very quiet by the end of our conversation. Then she started squirming and jumped up from her seat, like it was on fire, and asked if I was okay to go home by myself. When I told her I’d be fine, she practically ran out of here.”

  “Do we need to go after her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’d better let her be for now.”

  “Okay,” Jackie said. “But tomorrow morning, I’m going to drag whatever’s going on inside her head out in the open.”

  Leah smiled for the first time since Tucker bolted. “Sounds like breakfast at my house again.”

  Jackie gave Leah a wide grin. “Your breakfasts are the best.”

  Leah looked apprehensive. Jackie stared toward the door, worry lines appearing across her brow.

  After a few moments, Leah said, “I hope she’s okay. I’m concerned. I’m not so sure about giving her some space. If I knew where she went, I think I’d go after her.”

  “I think I might know,” Jackie said.

  “Should we go look for her, then?”

  Jackie hesitated. “Maybe
I’d better go alone.”

  Leah grew quiet. “Are you afraid we might spook her if we go together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go. I can get home fine. I have my car.”

  “Okay, but let me close up. I’ll follow you in my car. Tucker will kill me if I let you go by yourself.”

  Leah didn’t protest.

  TUCKER SAT STARING up at the stars, wondering if the sky looked any different in 1873. She may have been a history buff, especially about the Old West, but she knew almost nothing about astronomy. However, she certainly appreciated the sky on a night like tonight.

  On this moonless night, with no reflected light in the sky to dull the spectacular sight above her, Tucker stared as stars shimmered against an indigo background. In some areas of the heavens, it looked as if someone dipped a wide paintbrush in a bucket of stars and swiped the brush across the night sky.

  She breathed deeply and thought of Leah. Leah should be here, sitting beside her, taking in this breathtaking sight above her head. Yet it always looked as if Tucker was pulling away from her, fear and confusion getting in the way of what promised to be a very rewarding relationship. Tucker sighed.

  Leah’s beauty, like the sky above her, stunned her. Her intelligence fascinated her. Her sexiness amazed her—and she must stop thinking about Leah. Her feelings for Leah added one more layer of distraction to the one big frustration swirling around her. She needed to make sense of it.

  Deep down inside, she knew she should be able to sort through all the clues. All she required was the ability to fit them together. She touched her shirt pocket, the one holding the list she wrote days ago. She hoped touching it might trigger something. She didn’t take it out. The darkness wouldn’t allow her to read it, anyway. It didn’t matter. She knew the list by heart.

  The clues spread out before her were like a ten-thousandpiece puzzle begging to be put together. She needed to make sense of them and hardly knew where to start. Worse than having a missing piece or two, there might be some extra pieces, useless bits, which might cause her some problems, sending her scurrying in the wrong direction looking for answers that didn’t even matter. She sighed. Where should she start? She looked at the black expanse of sky again, watching the twinkling lights, and quieted, waiting for inspiration.

  As a kid, during the good times, she and her mom worked puzzles on cold winter nights. They would sit in quiet comfort, drinking hot chocolate, sometimes with miniature marshmallows floating in the cocoa colored liquid if there were any in the house. Time passed slowly, comfortably, as they patiently fitted piece after piece together until the picture in front of them bloomed like a flower to match the one on the puzzle box cover. Her problem at present was the missing cover.

  They always started with the edges. Tucker stopped, the thought striking her. You can always identify an edge, her mom used to say. If you start with the edges, you have someplace to build from. They never looked at the picture once they started with these pieces. They didn’t need to. The edges give you information without the picture.

  A potential answer? She needed to look at all the peripheral information. Maybe along the way, she’d figure out if there were any extra pieces, not matching the picture when it began to form from the border. Eventually, she might be able to put those extras aside and not be distracted by them.

  Now, what did she know about this whole situation? She began by recalling her stumbling out of The Charlie weeks ago.

  THE MEMORY WASHED over her in waves. She hunched over beside the door of The Charlie, holding herself up against the wall so she wouldn’t slide down to the boardwalk and end up sitting down. She felt her body tremble. If she ended up on her butt, she knew she would never be able to get back up. Darkness surrounded her as she tried to catch her breath and work through an unknown fear. She heard a vehicle rumble to life and drive down the street, but her eyes wouldn’t open to allow her to see it. The noise made her head hurt. Relief filled her when the racket faded away and the acrid smell of exhaust dissipated. A dog bark pierced the air from several streets over, then everything went quiet again. She willed herself to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt so heavy she couldn’t make them obey. Finally, she managed to pry open one eye. When she looked around, a pain stabbed her through her forehead, but she was able to see The Charlie’s windows were dark, except for a small nightlight behind the bar.

  “No,” Tucker said into the night. “I was never in the saloon. I’m positive now. I was only on the outside. The Charlie was closed.” She felt a wave of nausea, reliving the sensation of her body being dragged from a vehicle and hurled onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon. Several puzzle pieces clicked together. “I was dropped off in front by someone.” This single memory gave her a small section of the puzzle and, in an instant, she knew the truth. She wasn’t losing her mind. It happened. She didn’t know who dropped her off or what part the mystery person played in it, but something actually happened to her.

  Forget.

  She spoke into the darkness. “I was somewhere else before The Charlie. But where?”

  Forget.

  Tucker blew out her breath, feeling the fear accompanying the word until a different emotion began to emerge.

  Anger rose up inside her. She let the rage bubble up. She wouldn’t allow this to beat her. She already knew more now than a few minutes ago. An edge of the puzzle formed. As she suspected, nothing happened inside The Charlie to make her stagger from it. Something happened in front of the saloon. Whatever else went on, where it happened, it occurred in the here and now, not back in 1873.

  She tried to allow the experience to flow over her again. In her subconscious, she heard the rattle and rumble of a vehicle. She'd been dumped in front of The Charlie.

  Think, Tucker, think. Where were you before being dumped? What were you doing?

  Forget.

  It was like looking into a smoke-filled room. Nothing came to her.

  Well, she acknowledged the new information. It was a start. An edge, a very small piece of an edge allowed her some insight. She’d have to take the tiny fragment of information and build on it. She gazed up at the beauty of the sky again, breathed deeply, and knew with certainty she was on the right track.

  Tucker felt drained, but she knew she wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel and sleep. Besides, the opportunity to be out here like this, sitting on Tenderfoot Hill in the dark, felt good. The last time she’d sat up here she made the decision to leave Elder Creek, strike out into the world on her own by accepting the scholarship to college she’d been offered.

  When she heard footsteps crunching on the loose stones, her heart jumped and she wondered if she should get up and run, but when she turned toward the sound, she barely made out the outline of Jackie’s silhouette in the dark.

  Jackie came closer. She spoke in a gentle tone as if she were afraid to scare Tucker off.

  “What are you doing up here, Tucker?”

  “I needed some time to think.”

  Jackie chuckled. “You always did do your best thinking up here. No wonder you want to live on this hill.”

  Tucker smiled at Jackie’s insight, but she doubted her friend saw her face in the darkness.

  “What made you look for me up here?”

  “I know you, Tucker. When we were kids and something bothered you, you’d always come up here. You’ve got a lot on your mind lately, so I figured this was the most logical place to look when you took off from The Charlie the way you did.”

  Tucker waited a few beats before asking, “Did Leah get home okay?”

  “You’ll be happy to know I made sure she got in her car safely, and then I followed her home and waited for her to let herself in before I decided to come and search for you.”

  “Thanks, Jackie.”

  Jackie sat down on the little patch of grass next to Tucker. “You care about her, don’t you?”

  The silence stretched out all around them before Tucker answered. “I care for her a lot
. But—”

  “Tucker, cut the ‘but’ crap. You worry too much. One thing I know for sure, Leah cares for you, too. I know there’s a lot going on right now, but having someone who cares deeply for you will help. Stop trying to shut Leah out.”

  Tucker turned toward Jackie, her face barely visible in the darkness.

  “Cares deeply? Does Leah care deeply? Did she say those words?”

  “She doesn’t have to, Tucker. It’s written all over her face when you two are together. She’s smitten, and, by the way, so are you.”

  Tucker looked down at her hands—hands she barely saw in front of her. “Am I?”

  “Yes, Tucker, you are.”

  They sat listening to the crickets for a long time before Tucker spoke again. This time, she spoke so softly, she thought Jackie might not have heard her. “I know.”

  When she said it, even in the black of night, Tucker saw her white, wide grin. “That’s my girl,” Jackie said.

  TUCKER AND JACKIE sat on Tenderfoot Hill for a while longer. Tucker told her about the puzzle pieces and how she figured out her error—falling through The Charlie’s front door—and how she now suspected she was never inside at all but was dropped there by someone who drove her from somewhere else.

  “Dropped off? Somewhere else? Tucker, you need to tell this to the sheriff.”

  “Jackie, calm down. I didn’t share this with you to make you upset.”

  “But you don’t know what happened out there. You could have been—”

  “I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Jackie stared at her before asking, “How do you know? You can’t remember.”

  “I can’t remember the details of what happened, but somehow, I can’t explain it, but I know this—whatever it was—wasn’t rape. It’s about something else.”

  “What? What’s it about, Tucker?”

  “If I knew the answer to that, I would have fewer problems, wouldn’t I?”